by Hamish Calvert Mack, Andraya and Sarah are three teenage high school students competing in sports at the top of their respective fields. They have many things in common including their drive for success as well as the fact that they happen to be transgender. However due to the transphobic attitudes and policies in place across the US each of them face opposition far greater … Continue reading Changing the Game – SQIFF 2021 Review
There is a wonderful visual joke early in Tunisian writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania’s sophomore feature, The Man Who Sold His Skin. A truck filled with check-patterned laundry bags pulls up and out climbs man-on-the-run Sam Ali (Yahya Mahayni) wearing a shirt with the same pattern. For a brief moment I was transported back to the ZAZ (Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker) comedies of the 1980s, Airplane, Top Secret and … Continue reading The Man Who Sold His Skin – Review
by Tom Beasley “I see things everywhere that bear no logic,” says Joel Edgerton’s unnamed Lord, as if speaking for the audience. We’re around an hour and half into The Green Knight and the film is preparing for its final unravelling – a breakneck journey into a world in which palpable, earthy grit butts heads with bouts of fantastical, medieval surrealism. This is David Lowery’s … Continue reading The Green Knight – Review
by Jordan KingIrish writer-director Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother, a Samhain chiller nestled within the framework of a sympathetically crafted story about mothers, daughters, and the monstrousness of mental illness’ ravaging effect on both the afflicted and their loved ones was one of TIFF 2021’s most surprising standouts. Dolan’s film begins with a portentous wide shot of a baby’s pram beneath the lamplight … Continue reading You Are Not My Mother – Toronto International Film Festival 2021 Review
by Chris Connor The Sopranos which ran for six seasons between 1999 and 2007 was a cultural phenomenon following the exploits of the titular family and its patriarch Tony Soprano who battles to maintain control of his crime empire while attending counselling sessions. The show upended many clichés from many crime films that came before it and made a star of its lead James Gandolfini. Audiences … Continue reading The Many Saints of Newark – Review
by Giles Gough Historical crime drama The Defeated was released last August on Netflix, making comparatively few ripples in the pop culture pond. But this show generously rewards viewer’s attention. Set in Berlin in 1946, Taylor Kitsch stars as Max, a Brooklyn cop sent to one of the most deprived police precincts in Berlin’s American sector. Tasked with the job of turning this sincere but … Continue reading You Must Watch…The Defeated
Movies on Weekends 